Google invents new metric, web shifts to accommodate new Google metric, people learn how to abuse metric, Google invents new metric...
Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#32Imho, the problem with Lighthouse (and Pagespeed before it) isn't that they're not perfect, it's that they assign scores/grades. When Google assigns a score to something, people understand it to mean highest score = best and start optimizing for the grade Google gives them, not for performance and user experience, which the grade is supposed to represent. It would be more fruitful to list the issues and their severit…
The word for this general phenomena for those that are curious is Goodhart's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#33Wow, CSS system color keywords seem like a massive privacy leak. I just tested setting the property:
background: Background;
https://www.w3.org/wiki/CSS/Properties/color/keywords#System...
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#34Cool, but this article would have been more useful with some practical examples of things Lighthouse doesn't catch. If the point is "this automated metric isn't perfect", no automated metric is but how bad is it exactly?
I still don't have a sense for how bad Lighthouse is because I've never disabled all keyboard events, disabled all mouse events, or changed the high contrast stylings. The article almost makes the opposite point to me -- how bad can Lighthouse be if the only loopholes are things that would pretty obviously have accessibility issues?
The only useful examples I could see were the ones at the bottom of the article, which show up in Lighthouse next to the score.
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#35Having seen many other instances where chasing numbers has lead to a worse outcome, I think "metrics driven development" is an abomination that must be abolished. Unfortunately, management seems to really like the idea of turning everything into a number and increasing it at all costs --- I have fought against such things, and when I pointed out all the negatives associated with it, they would often agree; but then d…
Yeah, as a TDD advocate this is the most common objection leveraged against that methodology: code with 100% test coverage can still be complete crap. And I agree. If you add test coverage only to increase that metric the result is likely going to be crap. If instead good coverage is a side effect of a healthy development cycle it's likely the code is going to be excellent.
Basically, the metric should never be the goal, but discovering after the fact that your code does well on a metric is a good sign.
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#36Cool, but this article would have been more useful with some practical examples of things Lighthouse doesn't catch. If the point is "this automated metric isn't perfect", no automated metric is but how bad is it exactly? I still don't have a sense for how bad Lighthouse is because I've never disabled all keyboard events, disabled all mouse events, or changed the high contrast stylings. The article almost makes the op…
The article repeatedly states that it's not about Lighthouse and that there's nothing wrong with Lighthouse. The point is that your website can be completely inaccessible and no amount of automated testing will detect it. You need user testing, that's all. The "practical examples" to take away are simple: for a start, make sure that your (human) testers can read and navigate your website. Seems practical enough.
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure the argument in your post or the parents hold water - lighthouse scores aren't a "judge, jury, and executioner" sometimes dev tools are just dev tools, and nothing is perfect.
Wouldn't be surprised if they use it in search rankings, chances are they already do. And not being on Google effectively == dead. They already take into account page load speed (which discriminates against complex but useful & good web apps) and iirc also whether you have AMP.
Maybe Google's CEO runs lighthouse on a server in his closet and personally has hacked it into something ads something something data something something search
My point being, I'm not personally amenable to conspiratorial thinking, it correlates with argument dysfunction
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#38Wow, CSS system color keywords seem like a massive privacy leak. I just tested setting the property: background: Background; on an element, and then changing my Windows desktop background. The element immediately changes color to match my desktop. Then if I call getComputedStyle on the element, I get my desktop background color in javascript. This is in Firefox private mode, and apparently every website can read all…
...how exactly does your system background colour include personal information?
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#39Wow, CSS system color keywords seem like a massive privacy leak. I just tested setting the property: background: Background; on an element, and then changing my Windows desktop background. The element immediately changes color to match my desktop. Then if I call getComputedStyle on the element, I get my desktop background color in javascript. This is in Firefox private mode, and apparently every website can read all…
...how exactly does your system background colour include personal information?
It can be used for fingerprinting
Re: Building the most inaccessible site with a perfect Lighthouse score (2019)
#40Cool, but this article would have been more useful with some practical examples of things Lighthouse doesn't catch. If the point is "this automated metric isn't perfect", no automated metric is but how bad is it exactly? I still don't have a sense for how bad Lighthouse is because I've never disabled all keyboard events, disabled all mouse events, or changed the high contrast stylings. The article almost makes the op…
You didn't understand the article. The article doesn't contain a single loophole. Each of those features has legitimate use cases and it is impossible to detect whether they are illegitimate.
Just look at the first example. It straight up denies access to the content and the reason why lighthouse accepts it is because hiding content just hides content. Usually when content is marked hidden the user is not supposed to see it. It is therefore not a concern if a user can't see hidden content. Imagine if you had a hidden dialog that is only shown on user interaction. Any automated tool cannot tell if this is an accessibility issue or not. It's like deciding if your car should be blue or black. There is no objective answer and choosing the wrong color won't reduce your score.
All the other tricks in the article follow the same pattern.